Saturday, November 11, 2006

Adaptive Path is launching a new conference on February 12 & 13, 2007 in San Francisco focused on the strategies and tools for managing experiences and design teams. The conference is focused on issues that managers face in designing the next generation of digital products.

(Hey, when did Adaptive Path start organizing conferences? Even though it was officiallly an IA Institute event, IDEA2006 was really Peter Merholz' baby, and now they're at it again. Or are they simply renaming their workshops? I'll ask.)

The topics of this event (societal trends, experience strategies, service design, design processes, business+design, agile development) are timely and of great importance to user experience design teams. I would love to attend this event.

But the cost of entry ($1000-$1500 for 2 days) combined with the travel costs make this too expensive for me to attend; I am already planning to spend a big chunck of my education budget on the IA Summit, 6 weeks later in Las Vegas and I also need to save some money for the next EURO IA conference.

Sparked by the naming of the event and Adaptive Path's history of going on tour with their workshops, my only hope is MX-Amsterdam!

So if, like me, you are in Europe and interested in attending an event like MX-Amsterdam (or MX-London/Paris/Barcelona for that matter), let me know. I will collect your statements of interest and discuss it with the Adaptive Path crew.

You are a natural born leader, even if those leadership talents haven't been developed yet.You have the power and self confidence to succeed in life, and your power grows daily.Besides power, you also have a great deal of creativity that enables you to innovate instead of fail.You are a visionary, seeing the big picture instead of all of the trivial little details.

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

As I wrote before, on Sunday, October 15, around 1:57AM a spammer's bulk-email program sent a large series of messages that seemed to originate from my domain. This in turn generated about 2000 Returned Mail messages that overflowed my Inbox.

Here's what happened after that:

When I complained to my provider about not being able to access my email; they were kind enough to send me some suggestions to my regular inbox! It took a week before they replied to the alternative Gmail address that I mentioned in my requests. After that I could at least access my Inbox and email archive.

Then they sent me instructions to move the stuff on my old server to a new server, because they were discontinuing the machine that my site was on. I still don't see why I had to do this myself.

Anyway, the instructions were set up to make me fail: Step 1 made me change my DNS settings, which normally take effect after about 3 to 4 hours. Since I didn't complete the entire process within that time frame (I refused to copy all my files manually, 5 at a time, using their web-interface which was my only alternative since I happened to not have enought rights on my laptop to install an FTP program) after those 4 hours I could no longer access my old server.

When they fixed that (and I installed an FTP program so I could download all my files onto my laptop) it turned that there was another error in the instructions, so I couldn't upload my files to the new server!

And then, after they sent me new instructions, the server wasn't configured correctly so my uploading had no effect.

Last Sunday they promised to have someone fix it on Monday and report back to me when that was done. When I asked them this afternoon what happened, they said they fixed it but had forgotten to tell me...

So, I can now access my server again, maintain my website (which I confess I haven't done in ages) and create postings for my blog, like this one.Unfortunately, I cannot upload my email archive and the new webmail interface is a crippled version of Outlook Web Access, which sucks! (I know it is crippled because we use a full version at work and this one doesn't allow me to Select All, create Subfolders, return to a Folder, and other nuisances.)

So, from now on I am on the lookout for a new hosting provider...

Oh, I did learn something in the process: There is no standard subject line for Returned Mail messages. Below is a subset of the subject lines I saw in the flood of messages.

English versions:Auto Reply MessagesConsidered UNSOLICITED BULK EMAIL from youDelivery StatusDelivery Status Notification (Failure)Delivery Status NotificationDELIVERY FAILURE: User (user) not listed in public Name & Address Bookfailure noticeFAILURE NOTICE!**Message you sent blocked by our bulk email filter**Mail could not be deliveredMail delivery failed: returning message to senderMail System Error - Returned MailNone Delivery ReportReturned mail: delivery problems encounteredReturned mail: Error During DeliveryReturned mail: Over quotaReturned mail: see transcript for detailsReturned mail: User unknown[SPAM] Undelivered Mail Returned to SenderUndeliverableUndeliverable MailUndelivered Mail Returned to SenderWarning: could not send message for the past 1 hourWarning: could not send message for the past 4 hours

About Me

I am Peter Boersma (1970), male, and I live in an apartment from 1750 in the center of Amsterdam. I work with Adaptive Path on their European projects.
I studied computer science and ergonomics, and have been working in the user experience (UX) field since 1995. I speak at and help organize (inter)national UX conferences and am the host of the Amsterdam UX Cocktail Hours.